Lou Heintz, Home Baby-proofer

• Job: Baby-proofer, Decatur

What I do: Anyone who has had a toddler in the house knows how quickly he or she can get into trouble. Lou Heintz, owner of Super Safe Tots, can make parents' lives a little less worrisome. His company installs safety equipment, gates, electrical outlet covers and other gear after Heintz, 52, has inspected the home and recommended ways to make it safer for little ones.

Most of the homes he sees have toddlers, he said. He starts with basic family safety — asking about equipment every family should have, such as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms. Then he checks for the most common hazards that endanger children, such as stairways, electrical outlets and cabinets.

"I inspect the house, room by room, at kid height, looking for any possible hazard I can find," Heintz said. "My world is about 36 inches and down."

If the house needs a gate to prevent little ones from tumbling down stairs, Heintz installs one. He also replaces electrical outlet plates with ones that have slides or covers — not just the plastic plugs — and makes cabinets and drawers childproof with hidden latches.

"I'm a big believer that you don't have to baby-proof every square inch of the house," he said.

By using gates and doors with out-of-reach latches, he can prevent children from getting access to areas of the house that are especially dangerous, such as the basement, or places where parents keep things that are breakable or valuable.

The result often is what Heintz calls "safe 'yes' zones," where children spend a lot of time.

The typical installation takes about a day to complete. Heintz said he had to hire a handyman to help him when he first started, but he's now skilled at all his installations.

That's unlike some of his customers who, he said, don't know which is the business end of a screwdriver. And parents who are handy sometimes have trouble getting the right equipment or installing it properly, so they get frustrated and call for help.

What got me interested in this: Heintz said he first became aware of child safety when he was 3 and fell on a pointed brass andiron in his parents' fireplace; the andiron just missed his eye.

He went into business for himself after his wife died in an auto accident about nine years ago and he was left to raise their two children, then 10 and 7. Heintz said he needed a flexible schedule and spent months looking for a business that he really wanted to do and could do well. A magazine article listed childproofing as one of 20 businesses with a future, he said. He launched Super Safe Tots about five years ago.

He started a marketing campaign, "and, finally, one day, the phone rang." His first customer was former Atlanta Braves outfielder Ron Gant. He's also had a few other athletes and celebrities as customers.

Best part of my job: "Being at someone's house all day, I become part of their family for that day. I do stuff that will benefit them. . . . At the end of the day, I'm done. I have a sense of accomplishment."

Most challenging part: Dealing with some customers who are used to having people follow orders without question, he said. He added that the new moms he deals with also are facing new stresses in their lives.

"It's a new environment every day," Heintz said. "I deal with that, with people on their terms, and make it a positive experience."

What people don't know about my job: "How labor-intensive it is," he said. "Nothing I do is extremely difficult, but I'm constantly doing something physical and repetitive."

What keeps me going: "I love doing it," Heintz said. When he had to take some time off for an illness, he said, he felt like he was letting new customers down. "When somebody calls, they want me, and I want to be there."

Besides, he added, "it doesn't seem like real work — more like doing a project around the house."

Preparation needed for this job: You need to be handy and have people skills, especially when dealing with high-end customers and mothers with young children. Heintz has taken child-safety courses and gets ongoing training through the International Association for Child Safety and Safe Kids Georgia, among others.

About three years ago, he was the featured expert on TBS's "Movie and a Makeover"; he baby-proofed a house in Roswell for the show.

Heintz has a bachelor's degree in special education from Georgia State University and has taught children with disabilities. He spent most of his working life as a corporate recruiter.

- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.